I weep for Americans (Global warming poll).

The BBQ Pit
81

The poll question was “Is there solid evidence the earth is warming?” The question was not “Was the earth warming in 1988?”, nor “Was the earth warming in 1970?”, but is the earth warming now?

As the article in Science Magazine pointed out, at this point, the earth isn’t warming, and hasn’t warmed for a decade. It also wasn’t warming in 1970, it was cooling and Stephen Schneider was warning about a coming ice age. On the other hand, it was warming in 1988, when James Hansen was warning about a coming meltdown. And it is not warming now. I know you don’t like it, but them’s the facts.

So how would you answer the poll question? Me, I follow the evidence, I agree with the Science Magazine article I cited that there has been no warming for a decade, so I would answer that there is no evidence that it is warming, and you abuse me for that? … curious …

Right now, the evidence is that the earth is not warming. As we all agree (including Science Magazine), nobody knows what will happen from here. Some people say it will start warming again, some say it won’t. Some scientists expect the current period of no warming to last another decade … but they may be wrong, the warming may resume tomorrow as other scientists say. Or the world may start cooling again, as it did for unknown reasons from the 1400s to 1650. We don’t know.

Given the quarter century of cooling from about 1950 to 1975, which I mentioned above, it is obvious that this decade of no warming does not give us any indication of how the future will play out. We may see further warming, or we may see future cooling, or it may stay level for another decade.

But none of those were the question in the poll. The question in the poll was, is the earth warming now? And the answer per Science Magazine is no, it isn’t warming now, and it hasn’t been warming for the last decade.

I have made no claim further than that. Unlike you, I claim no prescience in this question. Overall, the earth warmed from about 1650 to 2000, and guess what? No scientist on this planet knows why. Not one. On the other hand, the earth cooled for a quarter millennium or so before 1650, and guess what? No scientist on this planet knows why … except we’re pretty sure that neither that warming nor the cooling that preceded it was due to CO2.

Now, given that they don’t know why the earth has warmed and cooled in the past, what makes you folks so self-righteously sure that the scientists’ predictions for a hundred years from now are right? The models? The models can’t explain the Little Ice Age, nor the Medieval Warm Period, nor the warming since the Little Ice Age, nor next month’s weather, nor this decades cooling, but you believe they can predict the future climate a hundred years from now … and you call me credulous?

Me, I’m happy to say I don’t know what will happen tomorrow … and neither do any of you. Which makes your inchoate rage at me quite mysterious. I follow the evidence, and you follow the models. But none of the models predicted this decadal hiatus, and according to Science Magazine, in only 2.7% of the model runs does such a hiatus occur. According to the IPCC guidelines on percentages, this makes it “extremely unlikely” that the models are correctly simulating the natural world.

If you want to believe models which have never been tested, models which the recent period of no warming show are “extremely unlikely” to be accurate representations of reality, models which have not been subjected to the normal V&V testing and SQA testing that all other mission critical software is required to pass, that’s ok with me. I’ve written a number of computer models, including a simple global radiation/evaporation/convection climate model, and I know their limitations. All they can do is embody the assumptions and beliefs of their programmers. So like most computer programmers that I know, until the models prove themselves, I place no trust in models at all … we programmers know computer models far too well to do that.

But abusing people who won’t make your giant leap of faith in untested models? That’s a bridge too far. And dumping on the American people simply because they’ve noticed that currently the world is not warming reveals a defensiveness that borders on desperation.

Finally, let me clarify my own beliefs about the climate. First, for unknown reasons the earth has been generally warming for the last 350 years or so, and cooled for about 250 years before that. I believe that until we can explain that warming and cooling, that all scientific pronouncements on future climate should be treated with appropriate caution.

Next, I believe that humans are having an effect on the climate, but not via CO2. I think that we have changed the climate (to an unknown degree) through land use changes (mostly through massive conversion of forest to agriculture, cities, roads and other uses) and through the emission of black carbon, which has warmed the Arctic.

Next, I do not think that even if CO2 is the potential cause of future warming that we can lower our CO2 emissions enough to make a significant difference in the temperature without massive economic dislocations which will hit the poor hardest.

Next, if you believe the models, the forecast warming is projected to occur mostly in the temperate and arctic zones, in the winter, at night. Call me crazy, but warmer nights in the Canadian winter doesn’t scare me much …

Next, I believe that we are discovering new things about the climate every day. It was just reported that you can detect the sunspot cycles in tree rings. It was recently discovered that when plankton get too hot, they emit chemicals that cause clouds that cool them down. Cosmic rays have recently been shown to affect amounts of low-level clouds. None of these are included in the climate models. Does this make a difference? I don’t know … but I would be very reluctant to bet that these and other ignored or unknown forcings are immaterial to the climate. After all, something caused the cooling and the following warming in the last three quarters of a millennium …

And lastly, I know that each and every one of the forecast ills from increased temperature (floods, droughts, famines, sea level rise, disease, poverty and all the Biblical plagues, if you believe the scientists) are with us today, and have been with us forever. Therefore, rather than spending billions of dollars on reducing CO2 on the off chance that we might possibly avert those plagues fifty years from now, I recommend working on those problems today. If we can teach drought resistant techniques to African farmers and develop drought resistant plants now, there will be real-world benefits whether CO2 is the mystery thermostat of the climate or not. The same cannot be said of Kyoto, which has cost untold billions already but has had no measurable effect on temperature at all. What I support is the “no-regrets” option, which means taking actions which will pay off no matter what the temperature is fifty years from now.

We now return you to the regularly scheduled abuse of intention because he has had the unmitigated gall to follow the evidence rather than the models, accepts the limitations of our knowledge about climate, wants to spend money on things that are sure to help poor people, and is not afraid to say so …

82

I neither understand nor do I care what deception the Fox Network has done regarding the work of Mojib Latif, as I never watch Fox.

Nor have I any desire to research exactly how they twisted his words, although I could make a guess. My guess would be that whatever Latif said (and I don’t know what that is either), Fox reported his work as something like “SCIENTIST SAYS GLOBAL WARMING IS OVER, FILM AT 11!” Now I could be wrong about that, but you know what? I don’t give a shit, because I don’t give a shit about what Fox News says.

You happy now? Why are you so fixated on Fox News that you would make up some belief that I care what they say, or follow what they say, or am interested in them at all? You invented a flat-out lie that I was “glad of the clear deception that Fox and others are doing”, when I don’t even watch Fox. What’s up with that? Get a grip.

83

Part of the reason is a backlash against the loony left, at least for me. We should have shovels in the ground building nuclear plants all over this country starting yesterday. The hoops that a utility has to go through to actually begin building one is way beyond ridiculous and into surreal territory.
Nuclear waste! Blah, blah. Yes we all are very aware of the problems. For now it is the only viable alternative to coal. Just please stop it with the whining.

The majority of the liberals here on the Dope seem to support nuclear power so I submit that it’s not just uninformed Righties that is the problem. :slight_smile:

84

Count me among the unbelievers. Mencken had it called a long time ago:

H1N1 falls into this category as well.

85

It was said that “a jerk that agrees with me is still a jerk”. In this case **Intention **demonstrated that he can be lead to what researchers are saying but just like the jerks at fox, he has no intention to understand what Latif said.

Good to now that he does not seem to agree with **how **fox and others are telling the American people on how to deal with the information gained from the research (ignore it, distort it), but in the end he is agreeing with them.

He claims that just because it was a simple OP poll that then it is ok to mislead readers by ignoring that this is a long term phenomenon. As the climate researches say, there is already evidence that shows natural forces still were controlling the temperature. It is by the 80’s that the natural forgings are beginning to be overwhelmed by the influence of greenhouse gases. It is also at that point that reality then is denied by misleading or deceptive skeptics. And they still repeat the same debunked points.

The decadal variation was taken into account by researchers (**intention **claims that he follows the evidence, but he clearly is denying that climate researchers take into account that natural forces are involved in the variations.

The other natural forces do not sleep even when they are beginning to be overwhelmed, they are the reasons why we are getting variations like the apparent “cooling” that we see in the last ten years.

As for the dislike of computer models, I also already posted how they predicted the levels of the water vapor feedback with CO2. But it is better to remain an ignorant and just repeat howlers like no scientists knows or that there still **no **evidence of the validity of the models.

It turns out that, as the water vapor feedback report show, I do follow the models and the evidence. **Intention **does not follow the models nor the evidence.

86

:rolleyes:

Mencken also said:“the common man is a fool”

But like Gary Larson had a scientist said: We know that they are fools gentlemen (talking to other scientists and looking at goofy subjects outside the room), what kind of fools? :slight_smile:

Please report if you are an anti-vaxer or just a misinformed fellow regarding the risks of H1N1.

87

Yep, he totally blew off the whole point of my post. Why doesn’t he go the realclimate.org and read what actual climate researchers have to say about their own research? Or even better, why not take advantage of their services and write them directly with his questions? They take the time to run this nice website. Free information from world class researchers, only a mouse click away. What is the point of going to an opposing opinion before even reading the opinions of the scientists themselves?

So why doesn’t intention write the climate scientists and give them his insightful analogies on complex vs. simple systems? I’m sure they’d appreciate his input and maybe improve their models. Doesn’t matter that their models are already fitting the data. They just need to make sure they’re not missing something and I think intention will really help out here. So, go on, intention. Don’t be wasting your time talking to us. The ones you need to be talking to are those climate scientists. Give 'em a hand! If you look on realclimate.org, they actually address comments. But, hey, maybe your thoughts have already been addressed. Hmmm. Nah, I’m sure your ideas are novel.

Which brings us back to the OP. Global warming is one thing. You don’t know weeping until you look at the current polls on evolution. A disgrace.

88

I love people like you, who blather on about all of the things that I should do, when you have no clue about what I have and haven’t done. You stupidly assume that I haven’t done any of the brilliant things you recommend, and then you want to weep for other people’s stupidity? Cura te ipsum, idiot.

Why don’t I discuss this at realclimate? I have tried a number of times to discuss these questions at realclimate. Unfortunately, I quickly found out that they simply censor points of view that they disagree with, to give a false sense of consensus. Perhaps you consider that as science … I don’t. Do a quick google search on “censored realclimate”, you’ll find dozens and dozens of examples, such as here, here, and here. See also my peer reviewed published paper which touches on the subject, which is available here.

Why don’t I write to climate scientists? I correspond with a number of them, I suspect a whole lot more than you correspond with. A number of them are quite interested in my ideas. I currently have another paper which has been accepted for publication regarding complex vs. simple systems, and I am currently corresponding with the peer reviewers about my ideas … and guess what? The peer reviewers are climate scientists.

Why do I “waste my time talking to you”? Well, because as hard as it may be to believe, there still are people out there who are uneducated enough to think that realclimate doesn’t censor interesting scientific points, that they present a balanced view, and that they are something more than craven apologists for Michael Mann’s discredited hockeystick who refuse to talk to serious opposition. I think it is important to counter censored science and fight scientific ignorance in a variety of arenas. Plus, it’s fun watching Gigobuster bark and chase his tail, in a schadenfreude kind of way.

I am doing the things that you stupidly, inanely, foolishly, vacuously, and insultingly accuse me of not doing … and you want to get up on your high horse and preach to me about how dumb I am not to be doing things I’ve been doing for years? And you weep for the intelligence of the American people??? Bro’, I weep for your intelligence.

For example, you think you were making a cynical joke, but you are right that it “doesn’t matter that their models are already fitting the data”. They fit because the models are tuned to fit the data. That’s why they give such a wide range of climate sensitivities, because the different models are shoehorned into fitting the data. Since the models are all different, something’s gotta give to make them all fit, and that something is climate sensitivity. The seminal paper in this area is “Twentieth century climate model response and climate sensitivity” by Jeffrey Kiehl, which is discussed here. Strange as it may seem, unlike you some of us idiots that you love to abuse actually stay up with the science and read more than one point of view… and you claim we’re the dumb ones?

Finally, I am sorry to hear that I “totally blew off the whole point of [your] post”. Clearly, I must have missed the point, my apologies. If you restate it, I am more than happy to discuss it.

89

Stop twisting my words, you nasty little man. I never said nor intimated that I had “no intention to understand what Latif said”, that’s your sick fantasy. I said:

I don’t know how to make it clearer. I don’t know what Fox said about Latif’s work, and I don’t know Latif’s work. What does that mean? Nothing. There’s a host of scientists out there I’m not familiar with. Since when is that a crime?

90

It is when you claim in other discussions to be so up to date, or to imply that the scientists are deceiving us about these things. Of course we are learning that you are choosing to be ignorant of the explanations on the decadal variations as a defense but that is not surprising to me too.

Here and in a different message board I give the opportunity to opponents to clarify if they are telling the truth, or if they are misleading or just ignorant.

So ignorant it is.
“You don’t get it boy… this isn’t a mudhole… its an operating table. (KRAKKKKK) And I’m the surgeon.” - Batman in the Dark knight.

So you don’t get it, this is not just the Pit, it is depending on how you deal with citations and evidence that then not just me will see if a poster is reliable or just deluded.

91

As the answers here show that you are ignorant of the basic explanations about the decadal variations I will have to conclude that until we see where it is published and what is the subject of the paper that then the climate scientists are just humoring you.

In context it seems that the paper will deal indeed with the complexity issue, but it will not deal directly with the explanations and current research on the decadal variations.

92

There are scientists on BOTH sides of the issue. There are many articles, journal pieces, books and so on being published that contradict the doomsday scenarios.

From what I see, people get themselves confused, and as Two Many Cats stated, in a ridiculous doomsday panic over the situation. First of all, there are TWO issues, but people combine (and panic over them in their minds) the two. One is conservation, and the other is what ARE the actual effects (meaning is it an Al Gore scenario, or something much less threatening, possible good?) of global warming.

Sub-issues are: is it man=made, and is it the death sentence some keep claiming it is? Anyone who can pick up a history or geology text can see that global warming and ice ages, and all types of climate changes in between, have been occurring since the planet was made, or banged, or whatever your personal belief.

According to geological finds, there have been several periods of global warming caused by similar circumstances to what we’re undergoing now. Some caused by such natural catastrophes as volcano eruptions, meteor strikes and such.

Based upon the stria (I think that’s the right word, I don’t have the textbook right in front of me), plant life did NOT end, animal life did NOT cease to exist and the seas did NOT boil over onto all of the land surface.

Almost all of the “facts” on global warming as it stands today, are based upon computer modeling. And there are a lot of untrue statements getting bandied about. For example, our (Alaska’s North Slope) Polar Bear population. It is in fact larger than it has been for about 10-20 years, yet somehow certain factions keep reporting that they’re dying off and disappearing.

I work for an environmental company (no not the whiny green peace, bunny hugging moron type, the type that actually does the work, cleans up the planet and provides ways for companies such as oil companies to keep CLEAN and GREEN).

One of our clients (a large energy company), has an entire floor (plus our company as a fulltime compliance assistant) of about 50 people, who do nothing more than collect seeds to ensure re-propagation, study and protect swans and other North Slope animals and basically make sure that the company not only stays in compliance with EPA and state environmental regulations, but goes beyond it into taking on responsibilities of conservation themselves.

Which leads me to the conservation part of this. We do need to conserve! Our “throwaway” attitude as a society (all of us, not just Americans) needs to stop. Not just because we don’t want to have over-flowing landfills, but because it’s intelligent economically as well.

As to do we have global warming? We certainly have climate change (as “they” have decided to start calling it after way too many areas showed record cool periods), but I believe that the 57% of Americans who say that they “don’t believe in global warming” are actually stating that they don’t believe that it’s: man-made, a death sentence in 50 years, or going to create a fraction of all of the doomsday scenarios one portion of the scientific community keeps coming up with.

Most of those polls don’t ask questions that allow a person to give a complete answer. They’re very generic and limited and don’t take into consideration the information and more involved opinions and beliefs as I described above.

Don’t forget, back in the 70s, when I was in HS, “they” insisted that we’d all be living in an ice age right about now.

93

Missed the edit.

I meant to say that it depends on how the poster deals with citations and evidence that then others will see how reliable or deluded that poster is.

Saying right away that you are ignorant on what the leading researchers are doing on the subject that you are criticizing is not something to be proud. And it makes others suspicious about how you are putting a paper together.

But I will wait for the peer review to make a better assessment. (But I can make the educated guess that the complexity paper will avoid mentioning researchers like Latif)

Lets us hope that the paper will be reviewed in a renown publication.

94

Ah the 70’s!

It was only a minority of scientists that said that an ice age was possible.

Most were beginning to accept the possibility that warming was coming.

And well, most were correct.

95

Yes, but not distributed evenly.

http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/01/97_of_active_climatologists_ag.php

http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2008/04/no_global_warming_has_not_stop.php

96

BTW, to keep this thread on the subject, that survey did also ask a very similar question to Australians and 80% did agree that human activity is causing global warming.

I would like to get the input of any Australian dopers on why you guys think that we are getting such a difference. I mean, you guys in Australia have no outfits like FOX that lie and do not correct their mistakes when informing the public?

97

Latif is a climate model programmer. As I have said before, because I have programmed many models of different kinds, I know the limitations of models, so I don’t follow the GCMs or their programmers at all closely. Read the Kiehl study I referenced above to see one of the many reasons why. I follow the evidence. So sue me …

Having a bit of time today, I’ve just looked at some of Latif’s results. If nothing else, he is much more honest than most modelers. He says, for example, that his models have no predictive skill past 2015 … refreshing honesty from a modeler, since most of them claim skill for a century in the future. So as our resident Latif expert, do you think that Latif is right in saying that his models don’t have skill at decadal or greater time spans? Does that mean he’s just stupid, because his model is so limited while other models can forecast a century out? Or does that mean that the other modelers are just blowing smoke? Or neither? Hey, you’re the one raving on about his abilities, give us some insights that you’ve gained from his work.

Latif is also unique among climate modelers because, as Fox News says, he claims that North American and European surface temperatures will cool slightly over the next decade, and that global surface temperatures may not warm at all over the same period. This is very different from what the Science Magazine article says:

(I must say that I found it funny when I saw that what is supposed to “lead to rapid warming” is “the solar component”, because I know that some of you guys laugh so hard you snort milk up your noses when someone says that the sun might be responsible for the warming. But I’ll take humor where I can find it.)

Latif is also taking a very different tack from other modelers. He is using natural cycles to drive his model. It is an interesting approach, but one that has been tried many times. Heck, I’ve tried it several times myself, using a variety of methods (e.g. Fourier analysis, best of group correlation, small to big correlation).

Generally, these types of models do very well at hindcasting the past, but do poorly at forecasting the future. Or as the brokerage ads say, “Past performance is no guarantee of future success.” But perhaps he’s found the magical formula … which of course would mean that all the other models are wrong. I wish him well in any case. If you read the Bejan citations above, you’ll see I don’t think it’s impossible to model the climate. I just think the current models are coming at it from the wrong end. Latif is at least coming at it from a different end.

So on the whole, thanks for pointing me towards Latif.

Finally, it is simply not physically possible to follow all, or even most, of what is published in climate science. There are literally hundreds of papers published, and the range of specialties involved is large. So by your own standards, you should be “suspicious” about how anyone is putting a paper together, since no one could be aware of every researcher in the field.

98

My first guess is that the question was different. I’ll research it.

99

The point was that there was an explanation on why it is reckless to just say that there has been no warming in ten years. The insight of why it is so does not depend on a specific model.

Fair enough, but it was the misrepresentation of Latif statements that was the issue. Misrepresentations like that are factors on why we are getting those poll results.

Still, another reason why I think Latif is important is that researchers are indeed taking into account many complex interactions to make even better models.

This is why, so far, I don’t see much difficulty on your paper on complexity being accepted. Or that it would make much of a difference on the latest research results.

100

However this:

“I know the limitations of models, so I don’t follow the GCMs or their programmers at all closely.”

Does show that you were still basing most of your criticisms on preconceptions, or rather that in your view there has been no change (are you trapped in the 70’s? :slight_smile: ) I would still say that maintaining that position only leads to having a huge blind spot when dealing with this subject.